| Sony eats $312 million loss in 2012 Q1 results Aug 2nd 2012, 06:30  Sony's first-quarter figures for 2012 show that despite the company's optimism three months ago, it's made a net loss of $312 million. It pulled in a whopping $19.2 billion in sales for the three months ending June 30th, partly credited to bringing Sony Mobile fully into the family. However, the cost of restructuring the Mobile Products and Communications Division (of which Sony Mobile is a part) came to $143 million, wiping out the additional gains to record a loss of $356 million. Gaming-wise, the PlayStation maker suffered a $45 million loss as falling sales of the PSP and PS3 were only partially offset by the sales of the PS Vita. There was better news in its imaging division, while sales of compact cameras fell, DSLRs and "Professional" products took up the slack, resulting in a profit of $160 million. In a trend we've seen across the Home Entertainment industry, sales of LCD televisions continued to fall, forcing the company to eat a loss of $126 million. Movie and TV recorded a loss of $62 million, although that's primarily due to a dip in advertising sales in India and the cost of marketing (but not producing) The Amazing Spider-Man, the profits of which won't be recognized until September. Finally, while it spent big to purchase EMI this quarter, big-ticket albums like Usher's Looking 4 Myself and One Direction's Up All Night helped the division make a profit of $92 million. While Sony's treading water to execute Kaz Hirai's "One" Strategy, it's still got $8.4 billion stashed under the mattress, and in the face of lower sales, is hoping that reduced costs will help it make $1.6 billion in profit by the end of March 2013. Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Digital Cameras, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Tablet PCs Sony eats $312 million loss in 2012 Q1 results originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink |  Sony (PDF) | Email this | Comments | | Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong Aug 2nd 2012, 06:04  Lenovo floated the ThinkPad X1 Carbon past us in May without so much as a whisper of what the lightweight Ultrabook's price would be. The company doesn't mind shouting it out in what looks to be a Hong Kong back-to-school promo flyer, though. As long as the Newsmth.net post represents the final pricing, local residents can normally expect to pay about HK$12,880 ($1,660 US) for an X1 Carbon with a 1.7GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. That's quite the premium if you compare it directly to what we see in the US for a PC like the Samsung Series 9, although it's tricky to tell if prices will be comparable on the other side of the Pacific: there's no sales tax in Hong Kong, among other factors. Even if the price varies by the time of the US launch later this summer, students in the city are already getting a discount to HK$9,180 ($1,184) that suggests at least some wiggle room if competition among Ultrabooks grows especially fierce. [Thanks, Sam] Filed under: Laptops Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Newsmth.net | Email this | Comments | |
